Earthwork, Lissard, Co. Limerick

Co. Limerick |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Earthwork, Lissard, Co. Limerick

There is a circle in a field at Lissard in County Limerick that does not appear on any historical Ordnance Survey map.

It was not recorded by the cartographers who criss-crossed Ireland measuring and noting everything they could see. Whatever this roughly circular earthwork is, it slipped through the documentary net entirely, and might have stayed that way were it not for cameras mounted on aircraft and, later, satellites.

The site came to official attention through an oblique aerial photograph taken on 5 October 2002, which showed a raised circular area roughly forty metres in diameter, defined by a fosse, the term used for the ditch that typically surrounds an enclosed earthwork. A fosse of this kind is a common feature of ringforts, the circular enclosures built across Ireland from the early medieval period onward, though whether that is what this is remains unconfirmed. Subsequent satellite imagery, including Digital Globe ortho-images taken between 2011 and 2013 and a Google Earth image dated November 2018, showed the same form persisting in the landscape, visible from the south-east around to the north-west. By September 2019, what remained visible had reduced to a faint circular cropmark, the kind of trace left when buried features affect how vegetation grows above them. The record was compiled by Martin Fitzpatrick and uploaded to the national monuments database in August 2021.

The earthwork sits in reclaimed pasture immediately west of farm buildings, which means it exists in a working agricultural landscape rather than a managed heritage site. There is no public access infrastructure, no signage, and no viewing point. The clearest way to appreciate its form is through the aerial and satellite images referenced in the national record, particularly the 2002 oblique photograph. If you do happen to be in the area, the site is best understood at a remove, since the feature is subtle at ground level and the surrounding land is private farmland. The cropmark phase of visibility, when the buried structure communicates itself through differential plant growth, tends to show most clearly in dry summer conditions when grasses above subsurface features dry out at a different rate to the surrounding soil.

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